Target is portrayed in the book "Naked Statistics" as having some pretty advanced data collection and modeling techniques -- they could figure out which of their shoppers were pregnant and adjust their weekly ads sent to those particular households depending on that information. This was in fact too good because the pregnant woman ended up being a teenager, and had an angry father calling demanding to speak to a manager.
What any of this means to me is if they have capabilities like that I am sure they made an informed decision based on where they see the market heading and decided this would be a purchase that would increase the bottom line, not grasping for straws as you say.
I think that was the parent's point. Target spent a whole bunch to enter Canada and it was an abject failure for, in retrospect, some pretty obvious reasons. If they were so good at data-driven decision making, they wouldn't have failed so badly.
The whole department that does the statistics modeling is based on one guy starting it up... And he probably has nothing to do with the rest of Target's operations.
What any of this means to me is if they have capabilities like that I am sure they made an informed decision based on where they see the market heading and decided this would be a purchase that would increase the bottom line, not grasping for straws as you say.